


Dancing Man

by EagleOfTheNinth



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-09
Updated: 2012-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-30 21:11:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EagleOfTheNinth/pseuds/EagleOfTheNinth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing Man

It’s not good form for actors to be jealous of their characters. Nevertheless, it happens, and happens often.

It’s understandable, John thinks. After all-it’s the characters that have the stories. It’s them that get to save the world or fall in love or do whatever, it’s them who the audience love, really. The actors are ultimately just tools, props that make the adventures happen. Because-this is the bit that nobody who’s not in on the secret can _quite_ get-the character is never, ever you. It doesn’t matter that their face is the same, their voice, their hair. Even parts of their personality. They’re not you. They never will be.

Except that’s not the whole truth, though it is the truth; they do become part of you. Something of them gets stuck in your soul, a little nugget of _other_ -ness in the rock of _me_. Especially when you’ve spent a long time with that character, when playing him was a defining role for you. So every day, John Barrowman wakes up, opens his eyes, gets out of bed and gets on with life; and every day, behind those eyes, other men look out, quietly or not-so-quietly watching. Like the Captain. Like Jack Harkness.

John isn’t jealous of Jack, though.

It’s not for all the obvious reasons. Sure, John’s sensible enough to know that while aliens and monsters are fun when they’re just guys in rubber masks, if they were _real_ then things would have gotten seriously out of hand. Sure, he knows that while immortality would be kinda neat, immortality while everyone else you ever loved stays mortal is really kinda shitty, and immortality that ends with you somehow becoming a giant wrinkled tentacle-head is just plain _gross_. Sure, he likes having a real, solid relationship with a man he loves, and a real, solid family that love him too-more than likes it, knows it’s one of life’s great gifts and treasures. He even likes having a name that is really his, a name given to him by his parents when he was just a wriggling blob in a receiving blanket, a name he didn’t have to borrow or steal. But though those are all reasons he feels kind of sorry for Jack sometimes, they’re not the reason that he can’t ever really be jealous of him.

No, the real reason is that Captain Jack Harkness, the hero, the immortal, the person who will live on in a million DVD collections decades after John himself is dead-Captain Jack, who’s all of that, can’t dance.

Oh, he can slow-dance. John freely admits this, and he admits too that slow-dancing can be fun. But it’s not fun because it’s dancing; it’s fun because of who you’re doing it with. It’s really just a pretext to get close to someone, just another aspect of sex and flirting and seduction. And all those things are great. But.

John dances under blazing strobing studio lights, singing his favourite songs. Singing his heart out. Singing and dancing, properly, dancing with his whole body and his whole mind, sweat soaking a fine suit or shiny stage-costume, applause and drumbeats ringing in his ears. John dances at home, too, practising, because everyone’s gotta practise, and even though there’s no crowd to scream it doesn’t matter because the stereo’s turned up loud and all there is, is music. It’s coming from somewhere outside him, somewhere totally transcendent; it’s celestial. It buzzes and thrums in his body, in the bone and muscle, in the steps and turns and the stretch of his larynx; it’s animal. It’s wild and glamorous and glitzy and cheesy, it’s silly and sexy and glorious, it’s letting go, letting go of everything else you are and surrendering, joyfully, to the music.

And Jack can’t let go. Not ever. Because Captain Jack always has to be in control.

The only way Jack knows how to lose control is when control is _wrenched_ from him, painful and bloody, like watching someone you love die in your arms. For Jack letting go is shameful, terrible, paired with grief and misfortune. He hates it, and does all he can to avoid it. Understandably enough.

Jack can’t dance. When the Doctor danced with Rose, when the world was saved and the monsters made human again, when the Time Lord and the shop girl twirled and spun and quickstepped round the TARDIS console, Jack just smiled awkwardly, shuffled his feet to the beat but couldn’t join in, on the sidelines like the shy kid at a party, unable to take off his dignity with his greatcoat. Jack can put his arms round someone and sway with them as a prelude to getting into their pants, but when it comes to dancing, pure and simple, Jack doesn’t know where to begin. And while he can joke and flirt and laugh and shout and snarl in anger, he can’t sing.

John can. He can dance, and he can sing. And ultimately, that’s why he can never be jealous of Jack. Because it’s being a man that can sing and dance that makes John Barrowman the real man of the two, and Captain Jack Harkness nothing more than a work of fiction.


End file.
